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Someone Gets It!

We had company the other day and ended up discussing a topic that led to more questions than answers. Wanting the facts, we decided, “Let’s google it!” I love having information so easily available. We headed to the computer in search of an answer.

One thing about my computer is that I tend to start something, then get interrupted. Okay, that’s life in general, not just the computer. Anyhow, I’d left my browser open, which means that our guests saw that I write a blog. Why would anyone blog? What’s the point? Isn’t that like publishing an online diary?

I hope not! It’s a little hard to explain. I quickly clicked through to my family’s blog – where distant relatives can see pix of my kids and read more about what everyone is doing than the one-line status updates permitted on Facebook. Much like I suppose my mother wrote letters to her parents and grandparents, I can write about my family’s doings. The difference is that I don’t drop letters at the post office; I post them online for all the family to see. I have cousins who do the same. Much to my children’s distress, I can post video from music recitals, too. Our guests agreed that was a cool application of technology to help family members keep in touch with one another.

I mentioned this blog, too, but didn’t show it or provide a link. As you know, this blog is different. Partly, it’s a way for me to deal with a horrible diagnosis without dumping all over my family. Partly, it’s a response to the dearth of first-person accounts that were available when I first was referred to a rheumatologist (there has been quite an explosion of patient blogs since that time). Wonderfully, it’s become a way for a number of us to network and find others dealing with similar issues. There’s another aspect, too, that’s hard to explain. Doctor D gets it!

Anonymous blogs allow people with medical issues to express their minds with a candidness they are rarely able to display face to face with their doctor or nurse.

Yes! And to share myself as much as I want without putting people I know in a situation where they don’t know what to say so they end up anyone saying something like “Why doesn’t anyone know what’s wrong with you?” “Go see a chiropractor” or “You can beat this with a positive attitude…”

For my blog, I didn’t go the anonymous route. I suppose I just couldn’t be bothered hiding my identity. I work at a magazine and figured anyone who knew me would be able to figure out who was writing it, and the blog is for my friends and family, too, anyway. And, really, I don’t care who knows or reads about my situation with RA. And, while I’m not anonymous, I’m not identifying all my doctors and I’m being honest about my care and condition for the most part (without getting into spectacularly gory details) – that’s the point of this whole blog.

And luckily, I’m in the enviable position that I don’t feel I need to hide my RA from people at work or anywhere else, and everyone has been great so far.

Does that mean I’ll reveal absolutely everything about what I’m going through? No, but I haven’t revealed everything to everyone in my personal life anyway. I’d say that my one sister is the only one who really knows the worst of what I’ve gone through since RA hit. And that’s likely the way it will remain.

But I do want everyone possible to know what RA is and what it’s doing to me and by extension what it does to people in general. The more people who know, the better in general, and the more I can get the word out, the more I will. Since I work in publishing, I know people who work at general-interest women’s magazines, and I’ll be talking to them about my story and RA as soon as I think I can do so without getting all emotional. It’s my hope they’ll do stories on RA to inform their readers about it and its impact. Keep your fingers crossed! (And hope that if they do do something, it’s more detailed than the Woman’s Day article! But no promises! Every magazine has damn word counts to contend with!!!)